


what I can know and admit to knowing

by VagabondDawn



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gardens, F/M, Kidnapping, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 16:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/pseuds/VagabondDawn
Summary: Amano and Uzume get rescued by an unlikely passer-by.





	what I can know and admit to knowing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pepperdoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/gifts).



> Request by Pepperdoken
> 
> Uchiha Uzume & Nara Shikako  
> Nara Shikako & Hyuuga Amano  
> Uchiha Uzume & Hyuuga Amano  
> Uchiha Uzume/Hyuuga Amano

“Heya, Crow-taicho,” a friendly voice says, as Amano wakes. 

This is a problem. Many problems, all happening consecutively. 

Amano blinks and squints upwards, at the pale canvas roof of the tent he’s apparently in. His eyes _burn_ , a distant, hated feeling that reminds him of speaking out of turn or crossing the Main Family and tells him, unquestioningly, undoubtedly, just how close he came to dying. 

The Caged Bird Seal only self-activates under two conditions, and the Hidden Cloud bastards they’d been fighting hadn’t even _bothered_ to try for his sealed Byakugan, not when they had a better option immediately available. 

Amano forces himself to sit up. His wounds are healed — no longer bleeding, at least, though his side is tender when he presses at it — and there’s enough light in the tent that it _has_ to be day time. How many hours has he lost? 

“Did you see my teammate?” he demands of the girl sitting, weaponless and cross legged near his feet. She looks like a Land of Fire native, dark hair pulled back in a practical braid, clothes so unremarkably bland that it has to be deliberate. 

He’s not sure who she is — calling him by his ANBU handle when he can’t identify her in turn is what Uzume would call _a power move_ — but he’s also not sure he cares. There are plenty of suspiciously young, suspiciously well informed ninja in ANBU and Amano has spent his whole life never asking questions about things that don’t concern him. 

“See? No,” the girl says. “Track? Oh, yeah. I just didn’t wanna leave you alone, Crow-taicho, on account of how I went to so much effort to save you from having all your insides on your outsides. You’re welcome.” 

Activating his Byakugan makes his head feel like it’s going to split open, like someone has taken a chisel to his corneas, and is pointless in any case. Uzume is nowhere in his range. 

The panic claws at his chest. 

“We have to go after them, _immediately_ ,” he stresses. 

The girl watches him, blank faced. “Are you combat capable?” she asks, like she knows the answer is no, no, no. He’s recently injured. He’s low on chakra. He already lost this fight, him and Uzume fighting together, and was discarded like useless trash. 

For Uzume? 

“ _Yes_ ,” Amano says. 

The girl shrugs. “Well, then,” she says, rising to her feet and opening the entrance flap of the tent. “Let’s go.” 

Amano scrambles out, awkward and ungainly, and she makes the tent completely vanish — there one second, then gone the next. But he barely pauses to witness it. All his attention is focused forward, to Uzume, to calculating how far and how fast they’ll have to travel to intercept the ninja before they make it back across the border, before they make it back to Hidden Cloud itself. 

They don’t move _nearly_ fast enough. Even when he crushes a bitter soldier pill between his teeth and refuses to stop to rest — he knows they’ll never make it in time. 

But on the second day, when he flicks on his Byakugan for a periodic scan of the horizon, he sees the sweetest sight. 

Uzume. 

She’s still bound, still struggling and railing, but she’s not with the group of Cloud ninja who had captured her. The ninja with her appears to be— 

“Shadow Clone,” Amano says, glancing back at the girl following neatly in his footsteps. There’s nothing unreal about her, but there never is. That’s the point of the jutsu. It can fool everything, even the Byakugan. 

“Yep,” she says, unsurprised by the sudden, out of the blue statement. “Couldn’t exactly leave a free Hyuuga sleeping it off in the countryside, when the point is to _avoid_ you being captured.” 

He hadn’t asked — not how she’d found him, not how she was tracking Uzume, not what she expected them to do when they found her. In his defence, she hadn’t offered any of that information, and given her use of his ANBU codename… 

Well. ANBU never asked. Even more… he hadn’t been sure she even cared. 

He changes course, aims directly for Uzume and pushes even more speed out of his aching muscles. They’re still going to have to get _home_ after this but— 

But they’d be together. 

He intercepts Uzume and her rescuer at about the same time that Uzume manages to wiggle her way out of the over the shoulder carry she was in — most likely while kneeing the other kunoichi in the head. Uzume lands awkwardly on the ground but twists around, perfectly prepared to keep kicking. 

That’s Uzume, in essence. Always prepared to keep kicking. 

“Rescues are supposed to go better once the rescuee wakes up,” the presumably real version of the strange kunoichi says, somewhat sullenly, looking at Amano like this is his responsibility now. 

It’s one he’s more than willing to take up. 

“Uzume,” he says, dropping to his knees. He reaches for her hands, starts unwinding the masses of ninja wire that have been used to immobilise her. Her skin is red and bleeding beneath it, but the injuries are largely superficial. 

“Get these fuckin’ cuffs off me,” she slurs. Her eyes are hazy and the pupils blown, but there’s not even the slightest hint of red. Most likely drugged, though Uzume has always been stubborn. Or, maybe she’s refusing to use her sharingan just so they couldn’t take them. “And I’ll show ‘em…” 

“You did,” he assures her, and the vice of panic in his chest finally starts to ease. “You can stop fighting now.” 

“Sounds fake,” Uzume says, but she stops twitching quite so badly, and lets him finish freeing her and drag her to her feet. She wavers and leans heavily on him, but they’re both upright and mobile. 

Things could be worse. 

Amano lets himself breathe. “Let’s go home,” he says. 

**Author's Note:**

> and each yellow-white glow  
> tells me what I can know and admit to knowing,  
> that all I ever wanted  
> was to sit by a fire with someone  
> — All I Ever Wanted by Katie Ford

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [sit by a fire with someone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19054189) by [DawningStar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar)




End file.
